NEW JERSEY JOURNAL

NEW JERSEY JOURNAL; AQUACULTURE AND THE FUTURE

By Leo H. Carney

Published: August 9, 1987

TWENTY years ago Dr. Robert B. Abel became founding director of the national Sea Grant program, a Federal effort to support marine research. One of its goals was to develop aquaculture, the ''farming'' of ocean, estuarine and freshwater environments.

Although few of the dreams that scientists had 20 years ago ever materialized in the United States, they have been realized in Japan, Israel and Scotland. and Dr. Abel said in an interview last week that it was not too late for New Jersey and the rest of the nation to get involved.

To that end, he and the New Jersey Marine Sciences Consortium at Sandy Hook, of which he is president, will sponsor aquaculture workshops. The consortium is a network of colleges, high schools and other institutions that cooperate on marine and related research. Some 100 people are expected at the Aug. 19 workshops at Atlantic County Community College in Mays Landing.

Dr. Abel said that there had been some aquaculture research and experimentation in the state over the years but that aside from the oyster industry, there had been few successful commercial enterprises.

Except, perhaps for the catfish industry in the South, he said, there has not been much luck with aquaculture nationally. For example, he said, although two or three dozen entrepreneurs are raising lobsters on the West Coast, the cost of producing them is higher than their market price, largely because lobsters tend to eat one another.

There are only 200 to 300 aquaculture projects under way in the country, Dr. Abel said. This is because, among other things, the cost of such projects are high and many have been started by biologists rather than business people.

''Aquaculture is a very delicate industry and has to be planned very carefully,'' he said, and ''above all, it has to be run by businessmen for whom biologists work, rather than the other way around. Until you can sell the products for more than it costs to raise them, there won't be much progress.''

Dr. Abel and others believe the country is on the verge of a renewed interest in aquaculture because there has been a sharp rise in recent years in per capita consumption of seafood for health reasons, stocks of fin and shellfish are being depleted and the weakened dollar abroad has made imported seafood products more expensive for Americans.

All this means ''increased opportunities for the prospective aquaculturist,'' Dr. Abel said. In addition to increased aquaculture production in New Jersey, Dr. Abel said, another goal of the workshops is to attract those who support aquaculture in other ways, such as with ancillary goods and services.

Klaus Mueller a chef fom Atlantic County Community College's Academy of Culinary Arts, will prepare a seafood buffet luncheon for workshop participants. The luncheon will include dishes prepared with fish and shellfish donated by commercial fishermen and aquaculturists.